Javascript is currently not enabled on this browser.Please enable Javascript for proper viewing of The Kathmandu Post website. Don't know how to enable javascript? Click here to see suggestions from google

Following widespread criticism of the bill to amend the National Human Rights Commission Act-2012, a parliamentary committee has pledged to revise the controversial provisions in accordance with the spirit of the constitution and international practice.

The constitutional human rights watchdog and various human rights groups have been criticising the bill, which reduces the administrative and financial autonomy of the commission and makes it mandatory to recommend the cases it has investigated to the attorney general. The attorney general, according to the revision bill, bears full authority over whether or not to proceed the case. The existing Act authorises the commission to write directly to the respective agency to execute its recommendations made after the investigation.

The draft contradicts Article 293 of the constitution, which says constitutional commissions are accountable and answerable only to the federal parliament. Even parliamentary committees cannot give directives to the human rights commission. However, clause 17 (3) of the new bill proposes that the attorney general can request the commission for further investigation or collection of more evidence, if necessary, before deciding to register the case.

During a press meet at Singha Durbar on Friday, Krishna Bhakta Pokharel, chairman of the Law, Justice and Human Rights Committee of Parliament, said the bill will be revised after consultation with officials from the commission.

“The bill will have the same wording as in the constitution regarding the function, duties and powers of the commission,” Pokharel said. “I want to assure that the bill will be revised after seeking consensus with every stakeholder.”

The amendment bill, which has been registered in Parliament, will be sent to the Pokharel-led committee for finalisation. It will then be tabled for endorsement once the Law, Justice and Human Rights Committee gives it a final shape following a discussion with lawmakers and the stakeholders concerned.

The Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions lists the commission under category ‘A’. Nepal is among three countries in South Asia to receive the status. The revision process has begun while Nepal sits as an elected member in the United Nations Human Right Council and is eying a second term.

“We welcome the commitment of the parliamentary committee and now want to see its execution,” Govinda Sharma Paudyal, a member of the commission, told the Post.

The bill has got into a controversy since the Cabinet last month approved and registered it in the federal parliament secretariat for endorsement. The Cabinet finalised the bill by completely ignoring the 17-point recommendations from the commission despite repeated requests to incorporate them. Anup Raj Sharma, chairperson of the commission, in his meeting with Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli, had requested him to consider their recommendations. But Oli ignored them.

During his interaction with the media on Friday, Pokharel, who also is a central committee member of the ruling Nepal Communist Party (NCP), said he would also take steps for revising the Media Council Bill.

“Media Council Act shouldn’t contradict with the spirit of the statute, which ensures full freedom to the press,” he said.

According to Pokharel, Subas Nembang, the deputy Parliamentary Party leader of the ruling communist party, has already assured that the bill will see necessary changes and the ruling party is committed to revising it.

The bill, which will replace the existing Press Council Act, aims to create a media council, providing it more authority to impose hefty fines on journalists and give the government more say in the hiring and firing of the council members.

Journalists and information rights activists have said the new council could increase direct attacks on the press. The Federation of Nepali Journalists has been protesting against the bill, demanding that the government immediately withdraw it from Parliament

Rights activists and the victim’s family organised a sit-in at the District Police Office in Kanchanpur, demanding the identification and arrest of the perpetrators involved in the rape and murder of Nirmala Pant. full story »

Lawmakers of Province 2 who were elected under the Proportional Representation have warned that they would obstruct the Provincial Assembly in light of the discrimination they have faced in budget allocation.full story »

An increase in agricultural production due to favourable weather, faster pace of reconstruction works and investment of remitted funds in the productive sector have resulted in the growth in the Gross Domestic Product. full story »

Domenico Nordio started playing the violin at the age of eight. His parents were not musicians, but his uncle played the instrument. “One day, my uncle gave me the instrument asking if I would want to try it,” says Nordio, 48. “And I’ve been playing it ever since. It’s as simple as that.” full story »

They start playing a tune that is starkly similar to Aruna Lama’s timeless classic ‘Eh kanchha malai sunko tara khasai deu na’, but if you listen attentively, you will notice the romantic verses of the song have been replaced by ‘Hai Krishna malai mitho bansi sunaideu na.’ full story »

One of the highlights of this representation is the presentation of the Chhath festival—primarily observed by the people in the lowland regions of the country—which is joyously celebrated by both Phoolchand's and Dil Bahadur’s families. full story »

Shelter Ashraya Nepal is organising second National Children Football Festival from May 24 to 28 at the ANFA Complex in Satdobato.

The event features tournaments in boys’ and girls’ categories and be participated by underprivileged children --orphans, victims of sex trafficking, drug abuse and child labour--who are living in various shelter houses in Nepal.

According to Khusbu Oli, the founder president of the non government organisation, the objective of organising the event was to advocate for the rights of underprivileged children, providing them the identity, protecting them from violence and eradication child labour among others.

The boys’ tournament will feature 10 teams and the girls’ event will have six teams. The boys’ event will be played under league-cum-knockout format while the girls’ event will be held on round robin league format. The champions of both categories will be get chances to play the U-17 friendly match with Malaysian national team in Malaysia.

“Asian Football Confederation has coordinated for the friendly with Malaysian Football Association,” said Oli adding that AFC was their main even partner and All Nepal Football Association technical partner. “The Malaysian FA will host both the boys’ and girls’ teams and also make arrangements for a week long training in Malaysia,” said Oli who was awarded Dream Asia Award of AFC last year and received purse of $ 10,000.

Besides football, the festival will also have art and music workshops. The organisation had taken a Nepali team to the Street Child World Cup in Russia ahead of the 2018 FIFA World Cup.

In essay A Word in Favor of Rootlessness, John Daniel writes: “When human beings settle in a place for the long run, good things occur overall. But there are dangers.” We also faced one major threat: the hostility of committed dwellers-in-place. full story »

Sadikshya Mishra was idly surfing through Instagram’s explore page when she came across a photo of American celebrity Kylie Jenner wearing a high neck crop top with a criss-cross design on the front. The photo, however, was not from Jenner’s official account—it had been repurposed by a Nepali online retail store, The Next Fashion House. full story »

Today, over a decade after the Supreme Court’s verdict and four years after the committee’s report, same-sex marriage remains unrecognised, putting couples like Pant and Melnyk in limbo, with no decision in sight. Two years ago, the couple visited ministry after ministry to seek help for a spousal visa for Melnyk, before filing a case against the immigration office. full story »

Once explicitly forbidden for these ‘upper castes’, pork has started to become a new favourite, reflecting changing attitudes and more cosmopolitan approach to the variety of cuisines available in the Kathmandu Valley, brought in by migrants from across the country. full story »

A week passed, and I spent the days learning the best ways to nurture a young strawberry plant while they were struggling to be firmly rooted. Other days, I maintained a vigil over the crate they were planted in. full story »

On the day of the earthquake, I was with a research team in the mid-west Nepal. We were waiting for a person inside an office building. Having just received an earthquake response training few weeks back, I was aware of the building’s vulnerability. full story »

One might say that travelling is fun and it broadens the mind, but it is difficult to be a perpetual outsider

Calmly seated in a chariot pulled by her grandchildren, great grandchildren and great-great grandchildren, Mayju Maharjan observes her fifth janko—a rare ritual, called Mahadivya Ratharohan, where an elder is celebrated for completing 108 years, eight months, eight days, eight hours, and eight seconds around the sun.

In 1995, 50-year-old Nima Sherpa moved from Dolakha to Kathmandu with a plan—he was going to take traditional Nepali lokta paper to the world. Sherpa had realised that products made of lokta, which were easily available in his village, could make it big in the international market.

Mekh Limbu’s art needs little elaboration. It speaks the truth, laid out for all to see and reflect on. It’s real; it’s quiet, keening and sharp. Take his installation ‘How I Forgot My Mother Tongue’, for instance, which was part of the Opposite Dreams exhibition displayed during the Photo Kathmandu festival last year.

Raamesh Koirala’s new book about the notorious serial killer Charles Sobhraj is a strange animal. Although ostensibly presented as a non-fiction memoir written by the cardiac surgeon who operated on Sobhraj’s heart, the copyright page of the book asserts that “This is a work of fiction.” Perhaps this was an (glaring) oversight on the part of the publisher, but given the manner in which the book unfolds, it might be an accurate characterisation.

A recent report has highlighted the ‘remarkable progress’ South Asia, including Nepal, has achieved in the past two decades in increasing school enrolment. Indeed, our own government’s statistics show a whopping 97 percent enrolment rate in the first grade—meaning that only 90,000 kids have been left out of school. While this figure, if verifiable, should be commended as a good first step in the right direction, much remains to be done to retain the students till their completion of secondary school, and in improving the quality of education.

Nepal’s drive to have a 100 percent enrolment rate in primary schools is understandable. While the hope of having each of its citizens educated is probably the aim of every country, in Nepal it is a constitutional mandate. Article 30 (2) of the constitution gives every citizen the right to free, and compulsory, education up to the basic level (till grade 8) and free education up to the secondary level (grade 12) from the state. And while the constitutional provisions may be legally binding, the ground realities aren’t just there yet.

To begin with, enrolment rates may not be the best metric to judge the state of education in Nepal. In recent years, enrolment drives have become publicity vehicles for the government. The prime minister and several ministers have been known to take the ‘guardianship’ of some children in PR campaigns during grand launches of such enrolment drives. However, experts in the education sector doubt if the thousands of new students claimed to have been enrolled every year actually end up in classrooms. Since many poor and marginalised families rely on their children as a source of supplementary income, the immediate opportunity costs associated make the families reluctant to let these kids attend schools. The problem is complex, and simply running a drive without attempting to solve the underlying causes of low enrolment seems pointless.

The other problem here is the quality of education received. Studies conducted by the Education Review Office, which falls under the Ministry of Education, show that students do not even grasp half of what they are meant to learn in a particular grade. And according to Unicef’s regional education specialist, ‘only 34 percent of children of school-going age will learn minimum secondary level skills in 2030’ and that around 27 percent will not even have learnt the minimum primary level by that time. This just goes to show the mountain of obstacles the country has to overcome. And the government’s activities have not been very promising.

To improve retention and quality, the government must provide more funds to the education sector. The global practice has been to allocate at least 20 percent of the national budget on education. This is especially important here, due to Nepal’s lofty goal of providing free education to all up to grade 12. Yet, despite numerous assurances and promises of allocating as much, the government has failed to do so. This year, the allocation is estimated to shrink to less than 10 percent of the total budget—the lowest in more than a decade—severely limiting the focus on improving education quality. If the government is to fulfil its campaign promises of focusing on development, and comply with the provisions of the constitution, it cannot continue to underfund the education sector.

I have a serious concern on the recent news about Lalitpur Madhyamik Vidhyalaya (‘Two more teachers at Lalitpur Madhyamik Vidhyalaya accused of sexual abuse by former student’, Page 1,February 5, 2019) in your esteemed newspaper, The Kathmandu Post full story »

This comes regarding your article (‘Two more teachers at Lalitpur madhyamik vidhyalaya accused of sexual abuse by former student’, Page 1, February 5, 2019) First and foremost, I would like to thank the Post for covering stories with such importance full story »

The graphic description of molestation of the little girls for decades by a math teacher in a public school in the heart of the federal capital made for a cringy reading (‘Two more teachers at Lalitpur madhyamik vidhyalaya accused of sexual abuse by former student’, Page 1, February 5, 2019). full story »

Conserving precious foreign exchange by cutting nonessential imports such as liquor, vehicles, luxury items and further curtailing exchange facilities for foreign holidays is the only best way to maintain reserves and balance of payment (‘Foreign currency expenses to be tightened to check balance of payments deficit’, TKP Money page 1, January 28) However, just conserving the limited foreign exchange reserve will not help full story »

About Us

Established in February 1993, the Kathmandu Post, Nepal’s first privately owned English broadsheet daily, is today Nepal’s leading English language newspaper, with a daily circulation of 82,000 copies. This makes the Post Nepal’s second-most widely circulated newspaper—after Kantipur daily. The Kathmandu Post is also a member of Asia News Network that has over 15 members and is known for its insightful, unbiased journalistic work of the highest calibre. Read more»